Anupam Misra takes charge as Hindustan Copper’s new chairman and MD

NEW DELHI: Hindustan Copper has a new hand on the wheel, and he’s arriving just as the company embarks on its biggest expansion push yet. State-owned Hindustan Copper Ltd (HCL) said Anupam Misra has taken charge as its chairman and managing director, stepping into the role vacated by Sanjiv Kumar Singh, who superannuated on 30 June, the company said in a regulatory filing.

Misra is no stranger to the trenches of industrial trading. Before joining HCL, he served as director, marketing, at Fertilisers and Chemicals Travancore Ltd (FACT Ltd), building a reputation as a general management professional with over 33 years of experience across marketing and international trading. His background spans industrial raw materials, including minerals, metals and chemicals, alongside agro-commodities, engineering goods and project business in a multi-commodity, multi-market B2B environment.

An IIT Kharagpur alumnus with a B Tech (Hons) in civil engineering, Misra also holds a Post Graduate Diploma in Management from IIM Lucknow, rounding off a resume built for exactly this moment.

And what a moment it is. Misra takes over just as HCL executes a mammoth Rs 7,189 crore capital expenditure programme designed to triple its mining capacity. The roadmap is unapologetically ambitious, aiming to ramp up ore production to meet surging domestic demand from renewable energy, electric vehicles and AI infrastructure, sectors that show no signs of slowing their appetite for copper.

The spending schedule tells its own story of intent: Rs 450.51 crore this year, climbing to Rs 1,421.73 crore in 2027, Rs 1,993.70 crore in 2028, Rs 2,227.18 crore in 2029, and Rs 1,095.48 crore in 2030. The payoff, per HCL’s Corporate Plan Vision 2030, is a jump in ore production from 4.21 million tonnes per annum in 2025-26 to a hefty 12.20 MTPA by 2029-30.

With a war chest worth thousands of crores and a growth blueprint stretching to the end of the decade, Misra’s in-tray is anything but light, but if HCL pulls off its Vision 2030 gambit, India’s copper story is about to get a great deal shinier.